The Days Ahead

On the evening of Saturday, June 21, in a televised special address to the nation, President Trump announced that the U.S. military had carried out a massive, surprise bombing attack on targets inside Iran with the goal of crippling the country’s ability to develop a nuclear weapon.  

President Trump has said repeatedly for years that Iran should not be allowed to possess a nuclear weapon, so in that context, the president was delivering on a commitmenthe has clearly articulated publicly and often.  

In his address, he said that Iran’s nuclear capabilities had been “completely and fully obliterated,” which Pentagon officials the next day described a bit differently, saying that the three Iranian nuclear sites targeted in the U.S. strike “sustained extremely severe damage and destruction,” and that a final battle damage assessment will “take some time.” 

Regardless, military experts across the political spectrum lauded the strike, its precision and execution, and generally agreed that at the very least, Iran’s nuclear ambitions had likely been set back years, which is a great thing for the region and the world if true. 

Where things go from here is another story and one that will evolve and change in the weeks and months ahead, starting with the Iranian response to the strike.  

Several days after the U.S. strike, Iran launched a ballistic missile attack on the U.S. Air Force base in Qatar, with no significant damage or casualties. The State Department has issued a rare worldwide security warning urging Americans to exercise increased vigilance when traveling abroad.The Department of Homeland Security says that U.S. officials could be targeted by Iran if it deems its survival is at risk.President Trump has vowed to escalate the U.S. military operation as needed in response to any Iranian retaliation, but has also said he doesn’t intend to put U.S. boots on the ground in Iran as part of the effort. 

President Trump announced a cease fire between Iran and Israel the Monday evening after the weekend strike, but the two sides initially continued their attacks, illustrating the tenuous nature of any cease fire deals in the Middle East. 

In short, it’s still very early days in this conflict with lots of unknowns and possible risk yet to unfold, but as someone who’s made it clear I’m no fan of President Trump, I support the action he took on Iran and the way it was executed, with one exception I’ll get to.  

But let’s start with the strike itself, code named “Operation Midnight Hammer.” The planning, coordination, and sophistication were flawless, including the brilliant move to send B-2 bombers west as a decoy to distract from the bombers heading east to Iran to actually strike. There was zero Iranian resistance to the strike, a testament to both Israel’s degradation of Iran’s defenses in the days leading up to the attack and our own military’s execution. 

Hundreds, if not thousands of our uniformed men and women risked their lives in the endeavor, and we all owe them our deepest gratitude. 

Some in both parties questioned the constitutionality of President Trump’s strike on Iran. I’m no constitutional scholar by any stretch, but it’s clear that for the last few decades, Congress has been increasing the leeway it gives to presidents for the use of military force without congressional approval.  

And, according to the Council on Foreign Relations, the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel has stated that for constitutional purposes, “war” requires a “fact-specific assessment of the anticipated nature, scope and duration of the planned military operations” and that this “standard generally will be satisfied only by prolonged and substantial military engagements, typically involving exposure of military personnel to significant risk over a substantial period.”    

In other words, President Trump took discreet military action against an adversary just as he and other presidents have done in prior years without congressional approval. He didn’t start a war or declare one. 

Listening to the isolationist wing of MAGA, however, you’d think otherwise. A number of high-profile supporters of President Trump have expressed disappointment in the president for abandoning his campaign promise to avoid getting the U.S. into future wars and ending the ones currently in Gaza and Ukraine.  

Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) has been a particularly vocal opponent of the strike on Iran, accusing President Trump of a “bait and switch to please the neocons, warmongers, military industrial complex contracts and neocon tv personalities,” even going so far as to say that the U.S. is nearing “nuclear World War III” with the strikes. 

Again, we haven’t started a war at this point, and you’d think that folks who have been nearly unequivocallysupportive of the president in the past would give him the benefit of the doubt that he’ll stay true to that campaign pledge as the conflict unfolds.  

If things escalate to a long and protracted conflict, however, I suspect pressure for congressional action will ratchet up, changing the dynamic dramatically.  

The one thing I think the president could have done differently was to better inform Democratic leadership of the strike in advance and inform them of the scope, scale, and endgame of the operation. Perfunctory calls were made to house and senate leaders, but Representative Jim Himes (D-Conn.), the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence committee said he heard about the strikes through social media, and Senator Mark Warner (D-Va.), the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee was similarly left in the dark. 

I understand President Trump’s reticence in reaching out to the opposition party during such a highly sensitive military operation, but it’s a longstanding protocol to brief the “Gang of Eight” congressional leaders from both parties, of which Warner and Himes are members, before any significant military action. President Trump has obviously built his personal brand on flouting protocols and norms, but by not at least trying to bring Democrats along, he’s ensuring he and his party alone will own the outcome of the situation, good or bad. And if the “bad” happens to unfold in the weeks and months ahead, it will be that much harder to lead our country in a unified response.Let’s hope we don’t get there. 

When these situations unfold, it’s easy to get caught up in the geopolitics of it all and the myriad possible global outcomes. In the end, though, real people living real lives are at the center of it, particularly in Israel, the nation state that Iran has vowed to exterminate. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is one of the most corrupt and flawed leaders on the world stage, but he’s correct in saying that the Israeli people deserve to be rid of the existential threat that a nuclear-armed Iran poses. 

An old friend of mine is what I’d call an Israeli American snowbird, spending his winters with his family at their home in Jerusalem and their summers back in northern Michigan. I emailed him the morning after we struck Iran, not to talk politics, but to just check in.  

He told me his family was days away from returning to Michigan when Israel launched its attacks on Iran, scuttling their summer plans for now. His description of their life now is a good illustration of who we are trying to protect with the action we’ve taken. 

He wrote: “We now spend our days parsing the news and our nights awaiting bomb sirens for an indication of when to dash for the shelter. Our safe room, though a bit tight on elbow room, is outfitted with a fridge, aircon, and Wi-Fi, so we have two daughters, a husband, and two of their friends bunking with us.The initial days felt like summer camp, but the stress is becoming somewhat wearying at this point. Where we are is less of a target than Tel Aviv or Haifa, but their aim isn’t all that accurate, and this morning there were some explosions that had our large stone building shaking. All and all, we’re together and happy, and we’ll see what the days ahead bring.” 

Yes, we will.